Teenagers are known to be reckless drivers. In hopes of avoiding accidents, Jordan Driving School requires thirty hours of drivers education, also referred to as Drivers Ed. Before a teenager earns their permit, they have to attend thirty hours in the classroom learning everything there is to know about driving on the road.
Although there is a lot of important information to drive safely, some of it isn’t necessary and realistic, and the class takes place on the computer. Staring at a computer screen for three hours for a duration of ten days can easily be too much to handle.
“Driver’s ed[ucation] is too long and should be optional. You should be able to take the class or have the option to study for the test on your own,” said Soett Torres, a junior at Leesville and current Driver’s Ed student.
The thirty hours in the classroom doesn’t include behind the wheel, known as BTW. Thirty hours may seem like a reasonable amount of time to ensure safe driving, but some of the information provided is rather obvious like how to buckle a seat belt or where the headrest should be located. It seems as if the more hours a student goes through for drivers ed, the better driver they will be in the future, but not necessarily.
“There is a lot [of] information in [the] curriculum that could be classified as minutia, such as vehicle physics, which I don’t spend a lot of time on. Those aren’t the things that most drivers think about while behind the wheel,” said Mr. Sherman, a drivers ed teacher.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety ,Administration “Despite widespread appeal of driver education, scientific evaluations indicate that it does not produce safer drivers.” Given how easy it is to pass a driver’s test, the class is nothing more than basic information that is not used on a daily basis.
Also, a student may go into Driver’s Ed with the mindset that they will not need to know all of the information, causing them to zone out for much of the time. The more hours of drivers ed, the more it can push a student farther away from wanting to learn. As a result, the students won’t listen.
The number of hours mandatory for Driver’s Ed should be seriously taken into consideration to ensure safe driving, but a student shouldn’t have to sacrifice their sanity just to take a class.
